Whether you are an AndroidTM fan or an individual like myself who could not bear to part with the iPhone, the disruptive impact that smartphones have had on many industries has been proven time and time again. Steve Jobs described the first iPhone as a “truly magical product.” Looking back, as well as into the future, it’s hard to imagine another device that will ever be more readily used each day by the majority of the population than our smartphones. In 2016, Apple® stated that the average iPhone user unlocked their phone 80 times a day and checked their phone over 150 times a day!

The mobile phone started as a way to increase communication and now the idea of owning just a “mobile phone” is considered ancient. It’s not only mobile phones that were replaced by the invention of the smartphone. Think of cameras, personal computers, GPS devices and even Apple’s own product, the iPod® – all have been replaced by smartphones. It’s not hardware makers alone that have been affected; new industries emerged and disrupted other traditional businesses with the invention of smartphone applications. You now have a computer, video camera, gaming device and movie studio in the palm of your hand. With those capabilities available on our phone, it is easy to get distracted. What are we doing when we constantly check our phones?

Yes, we still spend a lot of time talking and texting on our smartphones, but for many our phones have replaced our computers for website searches, email and have become the main vehicle for interacting on social media and with our community, in general.

A great deal of time and money has been spent by real estate brokers and agents to make their websites mobile friendly and responsive to help facilitate the interaction with buyers and sellers. This shift to mobile responsive websites was caused by the majority of real estate searches being performed on mobile devices. The amount of online research that potential home buyers and sellers conduct continues to increase each year as connectivity and the smartphone ease of use improves. Mobile search and key terms are definitely critical for an agent’s online success. But with the easy access to information and time on our hands, another search category has developed.

Home buyers and sellers are no longer looking at real estate properties, neighborhood demographics and valuation trends alone, they are researching prospective agents extensively too. Two out of three people interested in buying a home are researching prospective agents comprehensively online prior to working with them (see graph below).

The next question to ask yourself is, have you shifted your mindset to that of a media company? The reality is that when you are being extensively searched online, you are your own brand! With the mindset of a media company, you move past checking the box and being found on the Internet or social media and move towards properly promoting and managing your brand. This means you have to develop content, distribute content and be readily seen as a market expert – you have to be someone people want to do business with. The impact of the smartphone will continue to be felt by all brands. Take this opportunity to promote your real estate brand beyond what your competition is willing to do. The rules for winning at this brand game have been already determined. You need to fully commit to the new personal promotion strategy to win.

As you finish this article, take a moment to search yourself using your smartphone and see what results appear on the first page. You would be prepared for an in-person meeting with a client – you need to be prepared for the client meetings that are happening online without you. Be certain to be Google and smartphone prepared because your customer base expects it.

Check out the United Intranet for the latest training on building your brand presence.

What do successful people have in common? If you study people that have navigated the ever-changing world we live in and became successful in business and life, you will see them all share similar characteristics. Develop these six traits and success will follow you.

Vision

Vision is a mental picture of what the future will or could be like. It is the foundation for the changes you will make and actions you will take to support your idea of the future. With the correct vision, you are willing to go to extreme measures to see that vision through. Your vision for your life, your career or your business should inspire you yet be simple to understand. For some people, this is a statement. For others, it is a pictorial collection of what they want out of life and serves as a visual reminder of their goal. In either case, carrying that vision every day moves us toward creating the future we want and then to the future we must have.

Attitude

It isn’t very often that we get anything more than we expect. Your vision has you expecting to obtain great success. Don’t let the wrong attitude set you back. What you project outwards in your personal and professional life is what you will get back. What you think your career will be is likely what it will be. You will not have the motivation needed to succeed in life if you are fighting yourself. Don’t focus on what you haven’t done; focus on what you will do to achieve your dreams. Successful people have a positive attitude and stay positive in all circumstances.

Planning and Goals

Having a plan and establishing goals will point you in the right direction to start achieving your dreams. It is your map that will guide you to your final destination. Planning starts the process of building commitment to achieving your goals. The vision may be there, but without a systematic plan with measurable goals in place, it will remain just that – a vision.

Taking Action

The best-laid plans means nothing without action. Your actions will determine how people see you and how successful you will be, not your words. Leadership is an action not a position. Successful people are leaders of their future and take action each day to move forward. Make up your mind to move forward and turn your vision into a reality.

Continued Learning

Starting a career or business is the beginning of your learning process. Anyone who achieves outstanding results and lives a full life without regret became committed to continued learning and development. That person will read more, practice more and do more throughout their life. In all professions – from doctors to teachers to corporate executive – the top performers will commit to continued education that goes beyond the minimum requirements to keep professional certifications current or to please a boss.

Persistence

Persistence means you have the discipline to stay on track for obtaining your dreams regardless of what obstacles come your way. Persistence is essential to achieve the life you deserve and keeps you on track when others around you don’t provide positive reinforcement. Below is a quote that sums up an important component of persistence.

“The one who once most wisely said, ‘Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.’ Might well have added this to it, ‘Be sure you are wrong before you quit.”

Creating a great life and business takes time – you should plan on it taking lots of time. Getting there will take persistence. There will be setbacks, but does that mean you stop chasing your dreams? If your dreams are your passion, then you won’t give up easily and you will reach that goal.

Success leaves clues. Be sure you are working on fully developing these time-tested characteristics each day!

If you were at the 2017 United Real Estate Convention in Austin, Texas, you know the event lived up to its name! Unitedpalooza was an epic event that brought together like-minded individuals for entertainment, education, information, fun and life changing messages.

The late Jim Valvano, who rose to fame coaching North Carolina State to an NCAA National Men’s Basketball Championship and later as a broadcaster and proponent for cancer research, famously stated in one of his last speeches: “If you laugh, think and cry, that’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”

I’m always excited to witness our convention produce those types of emotions in our attendees. It is emotions that move us to take action to improve our businesses, improve our lives and improve our communities. If you missed the convention, you missed a lot of great days filled with emotions that remind us why we do what we do. Starting with our charity golf tournament, the opening networking session featuring local Austin musicians, two full days of education sessions, and a high energy awards session and dance party, the convention had nonstop positive energy that created something special each day.

I personally wish to thank all of our staff, brokers, agents and sponsors who attended Unitedpalooza. I stated that this convention would be an industry leading event and our best convention yet and the feedback we received from attendees confirmed it was just that! Take some time to look through the photos and tag yourself, friends and office.

You will not want to miss next year’s convention in Miami as we again raise the energy level of the event and the growth opportunities available to our brokers and agents. Be on the lookout for our 2018 convention theme and dates!

Writing unique weekly blogs is not always an easy task. You need a compelling topic with enough content to be meaningful to your audience. Recapping the United Real Estate convention held in Austin last week is difficult – it was not just a conference, but an event built around the idea that we are all different, but have the same growth needs. We can all find information online and through education courses. What we can’t find online is a human connection. If you miss an event like our convention, you miss out on the stories that move us as people to be more and do more.

The convention was designed to have the energy of a rock concert, with the comradery of family alongside you to ensure that you not only have fun, but are open to learning. Most real estate brands speak about expertise in selling some definition of lifestyle real estate. At United Real Estate, we have agents that excel and specialize in selling all types of properties and represent all segments of buyers. Our guiding values ensure that we have the interest of our clients at the forefront, to make certain we are the trusted advisors they desire and need to have on their side.

However, as a company we want to do more than that. We want to help all agents stop viewing real estate as a job and start thinking of the lifestyle they can create for their family by focusing on being an entrepreneur instead. Real estate agents, on average, are already working over 40 hours a week. Those hours should be viewed as owning and building your own business, not having a job! As an entrepreneur, your top task is to grow your revenue. In real estate, this means generating and following up with potential new clients.

While there is not a singular way to be successful in real estate, there is only one way to ensure success – that is to start taking action. United Real Estate and our partners can teach you to generate leads and be a market expert in real estate. You have to believe you deserve a new level of success and invest in yourself and your business!

If you missed the convention this year, you not only missed the valuable opportunity of connecting with peers, but also great educational opportunities. To quote Mel Robbins, a leading expert on personal development and one of our convention presenters this year – “There’s only one thing standing between you and the life you have always wanted – and that’s YOU.”

Growing revenue should be the most important task for every business. If your business is not growing, a competitor’s will be and they are taking customers away from your company. If you are running a Fortune 100 company, the majority of your time should be spent creating products and sales channels to generate revenue. If you are an individual entrepreneur, the majority of your time should be spent on income-producing activities. The biggest key in growing your sales lies in first knowing who owns that responsibility and having the proper systems in place to hold the organization, or yourself, accountable for the growth goals.

Accountability. How did such a great concept get such a negative reputation? Inefficient leaders and poor managers have wrapped it in a veil of negativity and used it as the enforcer of responsibility. We complain about it at work, and in our personal lives; think about your family budget or weight loss goals. Usually, it is discussed as a virtue that is lacking in others. However, it is part of the planning process that will position you to reach your business goals. What turns the fun activity of goal setting into the not as much fun implementation of the business plan is facing the fact that someone has to be responsible for the outcome. For all important business tasks, ownership and accountability have to be in place and individuals have to be willing to be held responsible for the outcomes assigned.

The most common misconception about accountability is the difference that exists between excuses and responsibility. If you look at the companies and individuals who achieve great results over a long period of time, they all know the difference between having success and being effective. You can have short term success and then reach a very difficult obstacle and not be effective in growing past those difficult circumstances. In order for individual leaders to be effective in the long term, the most important factor is not how they place blame, but rather it is based on their ability to take responsibility for what they can own. In taking responsibility for the outcome, effective leaders are empowering themselves to develop new personal traits and skills needed to commit to take action and place their business’ growth back on track.

Nothing should stop your dream of building an incredibly successful business. The growth of your business is what matters most. Here are four principles of accountability that need to be in place to ensure your company will reach its goals:

Designate the individuals who are responsible for growth in your company

Build precision in your budget and determine how each dollar spent will impact your growth

Create proper incentives and ramifications for the individuals who own your growth goals

Identify the right benchmarks to track the progress of reaching your growth goals

Feeling sorry for yourself or placing blame won’t correct your missteps. However, there is a great sense of self-empowerment when you realize that you have the ability each day to decide to hold yourself accountable. No longer are other people’s actions and perspectives a deterrent to your achievement. No longer can we use work, relationships or others as an excuse to not achieve. It is all up to you and your actions. What a wonderful discovery! The decision is yours, the vision is yours, the actions are yours, and you are accountable for you.

Think of accountability not as a negative activity to be shunned, but rather as a valuable coaching tool to help you grow. Top executives, athletes and sales individuals all understand that to truly excel they need a confidante, a coach who cares about their success and helps them succeed. If you are looking to learn more about how coaching can help your real estate business, visit our website.

As the New Year begins, there is never a shortage of newly developed business plans and individual resolutions that are built and created. Each time I go online, a new social media post or article will pop up addressing the importance of goal setting, offering motivating tips and techniques on setting goals for your business, career or personal life. In a recent google search I conducted for the term ‘goal setting’, the search produced 15.9 million results! There is definitely not a shortage of information on how to set goals and build plans. What there is a shortage of, is people and enterprises that actually reach their goals.

It’s not setting goals, building business plans or creating New Year’s resolutions that are the problem, it’s knowing what the real obstacles are that you are going to have to overcome that keeps people from achieving the results they desire. Whether you are setting S.M.A.R.T. goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Based) or B.H.A.G. (Big Hairy Audacious Goals), if you do not know what hurdles you will be encountering you won’t know the proper steps to take to leap over them. You can do a lot of things right with regards to staying positive, taking care of your health, visualizing your success, having an accountability partner and still end up short of reaching your goals. Without conducting the proper research of the obstacles you will encounter during your journey, you will become either discouraged or unprepared to reach your desired outcome or win against your competition when you reach the difficult part of executing your plan.

It’s not only important to know what to do to reach your goals, it is equally important to know what the real obstacles will be to reach your goals that far too often are overlooked. Not understanding the difficulties of achieving a worthwhile goal leads people to underestimate what actions are required to accomplish their goals. Most people have no challenges with dreaming big, they are challenged with understanding how much work is needed to overcome the unidentified obstacles they will encounter along their journey. However, you can overcome this universal goal setting deficiency with proper research that identifies the obstacles ahead of you and gives you insight on actions to take to overcome those challenges.

Through research you find out who and what you are competing against. What is the result that matters and what relevant skills will you need to develop to achieve the goal. It does not matter whether it is for advancing your career, launching a new business, or losing weight; proper research is the first step to get you on the right path to success to reach your goal. Research also helps you identify the pitfalls to avoid. It allows you to know what has been done before, and what the needs, rewards, trends, and new developments are. You can also discern what to learn and what to avoid. Good planning is a component of research. Sounds simple enough, but how much time do we spend researching and planning versus just having a plan. A plan and planning are two distinctly different items. Research is a part of planning that educates and provides you an organized format for both the goals you want to achieve and identifies the obstacles you will encounter along the way.

Napoleon Hill, in his bestselling book, Think and Grow Rich, wrote, “Anybody can wish for riches, and most people do, but only a few know that a definite plan, plus a burning desire for wealth, are the only dependable means of accumulating wealth.” It is human nature to want better, but why do so many people get off track? Just because you wish it, just because you want it, just because you think it doesn’t mean you will get it. You need to have a definitive process to follow that allows you to get to where you want to go. That process includes setting goals, developing action plans and properly identifying the real obstacles you will have to overcome during the course of the year.

It’s a new year, and instead of just following the advice and expert opinions on how to set goals, positon yourself for a breakthrough year and also take the time to learn what key obstacles you will have to overcome to reach your annual goal. In order for you to accomplish something significant in 2017, it will require a lot of work. In fact, it will most likely take more effort than you realize.

What strategies, resources, time commitment and skills will be required for you to have the transformational year you have outlined in your annual plan?

The sales profession is one of the largest occupational groups in the United States. It is estimated that over 15 million people work in sales related jobs. In the real estate industry there are currently over 1.2 million Realtors. Across all industries, sales is a very competitive occupation, and one that allows the top performers to be highly compensated.

Being in sales is very similar to running your own business and in commission based sales occupations, such as working as a real estate agent, you are in-fact running your own business. In any entrepreneurial role you must have daily habits that will ensure you manage your time effectively. Moving past the general sales training that is made available to all individuals in a selling occupation, there are certain skills that top performers have developed that have made them excel. Here are the three “C’s” that are not taught in sales training courses and make up the intrinsic skills that separate the top 5% of sales performers from their counterparts.

Caring – All successful sales people have come to understand that they should listen to their potential clients more and speak less when they are meeting with them. This becomes the formula for any successful sales person in both Business to Business sales and Business to Consumer sales. It is the basis for being a highly paid advisor as opposed to a sales rep. Not only do the top sales people ask more questions of their potential clients, they listen better. Their listening skills are superior to others who just hear but don’t really understand the needs of their buyers. The top sales people have empathy for their potential clients and are able to understand the buyer’s problems or their unmet goals. They relate to their feelings in a way that allows them to become trusted with helping the buyer reach a new level of satisfaction by guiding them to solve their problems with the solutions they have to offer.

Candor – A top sales person will focus initially on the buyers needs and not on the services they are offering. When the buyer realizes the seller cares about their problems and why those problems matter, the sales person becomes a trusted advisor. A trusted advisor, in comparison to someone who is just selling a product, earns the right to be straight forward and honest with the potential buyer. Top sales professionals not only ask more questions than their counterparts, they also ask better questions. More developed questions stimulate thought by the buyer of what their unmet needs or desires truly are. The top sales pros do not worry about losing rapport with a buyer, as they have established trust. When you care about your profession and develop a trusted relationship with your buyer, the ability to ask them difficult questions about why they are doing things in a certain way is earned. This honest dialogue is respected by the buyer. The odds that the buyer will choose your services or product over a competitors greatly favors the sales person who has the ability to have candid conversations with potential buyers.

Competence – Most sales professionals know how their products or services function and how they can fit a buyer’s needs. The difference between top sales people and others is the top performers know how their services or products solve the specific problems of the buyer they are working with today. Top sales people are not generalists, they are experts in their field. This means they know more about the future of an individual buyer’s business or investments than their client does. In order to gain this expertise, the top sales professionals spend the time necessary to study their industry and work on developing their own personal skills. This gives them more experience, which allows the top sales person to express that knowledge using a question based methodology, therefore putting the buyer’s needs at the forefront.

To boost your income and separate yourself from your competition, it is not enough to commit to only completing your company’s standard sales training or your industries continuing education requirements. The key to long lasting sales success is mastering the three C’s of selling. Be certain to commit yourself to continued learning opportunities. To learn more about boosting your income in real estate to a new level, join us at the 2017 Unitedpalooza.

Whether you’ve been in real estate your entire career or are interested in getting started, United Real Estate has the solution for you.

Our Jumpstart Program helps new agents get their careers started by teaching the stepping stones to being successful in real estate. If you complete the training requirements, your registration fee will be 100-percent reimbursed after you make a sale.

Or if you’ve been in the business for years, our Accelerate program helps agents boost their careers with listing/selling techniques, tips for enhanced productivity and marketing/prospecting best practices.

The best part? United Real Estate agents earn 100-percent commission. Our company doesn’t take any percentage of the commission our agents earn when clients buy or sell a home. Unlike other franchises, which sometimes demand up to a 50-sspercent split in commission, you’ll enjoy 100 percent real estate commission on every transaction. The only charges you’ll be dealing with are a small transaction fee ($300-$600; variable by region) and a $65 monthly office fee.

This arrangement also benefits clients. It motivates each agent to provide the best service available in order to earn that commission. It’s a win-win situation for our agents and their clients.

It’s the perfect time of year to take care of a few little projects at your house – before the cold weather arrives.

1. Clean out your gutters
Remove leaves and other debris from your drainpipe and gutters to prevent clogging and other future damage. If left untreated, clogged gutters and drains can form ice dams that prevent your drainage systems from working properly and possibly even leaks into your home.

2. Freshen your filters
Clean or replace your furnace filters to prevent unwanted pollen and debris from polluting your air. Sediment build-up can cause your system to work less efficiently or potentially become a fire hazard.

3. Clean your chimney
Keep your family safe by checking your fireplace for soot or creosote build-up. Discard old ashes and ensure the damper is open to allow air to freely move through the chimney. Even better, do a chimney sweep or hire someone to make sure your chimney is clean.

4. Get your light right
With less and less daylight, make sure you protect your family’s safety with lighting. Since outdoor lights are generally left on for an extended period of time, make sure to buy energy-saver products. For even more energy efficiency, look for products that come with automatic shut-offs and motion sensors.

Thinking about putting your house on the market in the next spring? Take pictures now. Fall is one of the most beautiful times of year and this will help you ensure you are prepared whenever you are ready to sell your home.